May 6, 2013
The early history of Christianity is a history of persecution, with
pagans zealously defending their own faiths through torture and
martyrdom and Christians being mauled by lions for the
entertainment of the crowd. Or is it? Biblical scholar Candida Moss
reviewed the evidence of early Christian persecution for her new
book, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a
Story of Martyrdom, and found it mostly lacking. From the
publisher's description: As the story goes, vast numbers of
believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive
because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints,
Christianity’s inspirational heroes, are still venerated today.
"Moss, however, exposes that the “Age of Martyrs” is a
fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans
to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious
exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and
Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to
marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The
traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school
classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders,
politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and
always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. Moss urges
modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the
world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the
consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these
martyrdom stories provide." Moss joins us this Sunday to talk about
her book and about how this narrative of persecution hurts
Christians in the world today.